Early Neolithic genomes from the eastern Fertile Crescent

Abstract

We sequenced Early Neolithic genomes from the Zagros region of Iran (eastern Fertile Crescent), where some of the earliest evidence for farming is found, and identify a previously uncharacterized population that is neither ancestral to the first European farmers nor has contributed substantially to the ancestry of modern Europeans. These people are estimated to have separated from Early Neolithic farmers in Anatolia some 46,000 to 77,000 years ago and show affinities to modern-day Pakistani and Afghan populations, but particularly to Iranian Zoroastrians. We conclude that multiple, genetically differentiated hunter-gatherer populations adopted farming in southwestern Asia, that components of pre-Neolithic population structure were preserved as farming spread into neighboring regions, and that the Zagros region was the cradle of eastward expansion

The Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe

“…145 We also generated 62 new direct radiocarbon dates (Extended Data Bronze Age Britain. We combined our data with previously published ancient DNA data [2][3][4][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] 150 to form a genome-wide dataset of 476 ancient individuals (Supplementary Table 1). The 151 combined dataset included Beaker-associated individuals from Iberia (n=20), southern France 152 (n=4), northern Italy (n=1), central Europe (n=56), The Netherlands (n=9) and Britain (n=19).…”

Genomic approaches and their contributions to understanding the European Neolithisation

“…In this study, the authors suggested that the affinities of Zagros Neolithic individuals to modern pop- ulations of southern Asia can be related to the spread of Indo-Iranian languages or Dravidian languages, along with the demographic expansion of farming into the region (Broushaki et al 2016). This study also pointed out that the European Neolithic migration probably had a different genetic source than the eastern Fertile Crescent.…”

“…Iran show a distinct genetic signature from both European hunter-gatherers and farmers, close to modern Pakistanis and Afghans (Broushaki et al 2016). In this study, the authors suggested that the affinities of Zagros Neolithic individuals to modern pop- ulations of southern Asia can be related to the spread of Indo-Iranian languages or Dravidian languages, along with the demographic expansion of farming into the region (Broushaki et al 2016).…”

“…Only short sequences from mitochondrial DNA were available from Pre-Pottery Neolithic samples (Fernández et al 2014). However, recently, whole genomes and genome-wide data from the Fertile Crescent region have become available, giving a first glimpse of the Near-Eastern genetic pool through time and space (Broushaki et al 2016;Lazaridis et al 2016;Gallego-Llorente et al in press). The analysis of samples from such warm areas has now become possible thanks to the recovery of relatively high endogenous content from the petrous bone, used as the main DNA source in all three studies (see section above).…”

“…Thanks to the specific sampling of the petrous bone, it became possible to retrieve and sequence the genome of a sample from an especially degrading environment such as Africa for the first time (GallegoLlorente et al 2015), and more recently, even a handful of the first farmers from the Near East (Broushaki et al 2016;Gallego-Llorente et al in press;Lazaridis et al 2016) …”